“Oni! A baby was born in secret and you did not tell the Temple?”
“I called to his sister and heard only her! She was a strong one. She shone in that room. I saw nothing of him. I knew you would be taking this woman’s girl and thought the boy must surely be just a boy. He could help his mother. She had so little, and such a hard life!”
“What have you done?”
“Me, those years ago? You took his sister mere months back, yes?”
Lunicia felt her face burn. The apartment had been tiny, just a room. It was dark. The windows were covered with thick material. Lunicia assumed this was to keep the business of the mother discreet. Little Clare sat on the couch, her eyes alight at the promises Lunicia made. Her mother sat next to her, cheeks streaked with tears that cleaned the cake of dirt and rouge from them. The brother stood stock still in porter’s pants and a dirty shirt in the far corner, glaring under a shock of black hair.
There had been an ashy shadow in the air, it clung to the furniture and oozed down the walls. She had shaken off the vision and rationalized her sense of disquiet. So many of the gifted cast unknowing energies about them and Clare, despite her seeming eagerness, likely had fears hanging about her.
“I saw power there, too,” Lunicia’s voice was failing her, “and thought it was Clare’s. He said nothing. But he hated me. He cast no curse…”
“He’s found his means to curse, now,” Oni replied.
The next evening was the full moon. The Temple priests were in the upper hall to choose another High Priestess. Lunicia was asked to stay in her room, but could find no peace there. She needed somebody who would listen to her. Gwynn seemed the most likely, so she went to find her.
She was in the lower cloister when the moonlight’s glow was dappled by long shimmering gray strands that emanated from cracks in the huge doors of the front gate. They wrapped around every object, trailed around every corner, poked and tested the darker nooks under eaves and bushes. They slid up the side of the Tower where the priests had gathered. The instant they reached it, they flashed with brilliance and noise. Immediately afterward, black smoke billowed out the upper hall archways.
Lunicia threw herself into shadows, hiding from the seeking tentacles that looked so much like the strands of the curse in her family’s tomb.
Another bang, and the gates flew open. A figure strode in. It was the angry young brother of Clare. This time he was dressed in fine clothes, bedecked with gold and jewels. All around him, the mundane staff of the Temple scurried to shelter.
“Young magi!” he called, his voice a husky boom. “I am the free wizard Jarek. I have broken the spells your masters used to bind you. Come hear my message and be free.”
Doors opened along the dormitory hallways. Children and young people peered out from their rooms. They looked curious, not afraid, as the winding light strands caressed them. They played with them, laughing at the crackling and enticed by the curling twists that drew them back to the main square and Jarek. One young girl ran toward the stranger. It was Porcia giggling as she announced, “He came! I told you!”
Jerak draped his arm around her. “You know you have been lied to by your elders. You know they kidnapped you from your families, kept you in this prison and forced you to work night and day on useless tasks while they basked in the sun and made magic as they pleased.” He paused. His audience was wide-eyed and listening.
“But you don’t know why they’ve done this. They put you in chains and forbid you to use your power for one reason alone: because they know you are far more powerful than they are. They want to remain in control. They want to make sure that no one rises up among you and uses your power as you see fit. They are old and weak.
“I say don’t give over your youth and your power to these old priests. Come out of slavery and follow me! I will teach you how to use your strength to make your dreams come true. I will set you free to be with your families or roam the island wherever you please. We’ll have mighty adventures, sharing magic and wealth! Will you follow me?”
A roar rose up all around Lunicia. Children all over the Temple raced from their rooms. They yelled to each other and to the stranger. The Temple workers were powerless to stop the rush. And on the rooftop of the main building, where the strongest of the arcane adults were gathered, there was only silence and black smoke.
Lunicia had to find Gwynn to convince her not to go. But before she could bring herself to move out of hiding she saw young Porcia whisper into Jarek’s ear. He looked up to Lunicia’s rooms and a snaking column of ash pushed reared up struck there immediately. The whole dorm shook with the power of it. When the the gray smoke cleared, a giant smoldering hole was all that remained of that corner of the building.
A small scream caught her attention. It was Gwynn, looking up at the ruined dorm in shock and horror. “Mistress!” she cried.
Other children were noticing Gwynn, standing still while they raced like a flock to the main Temple square. She would be pointed out if she did not quickly hide. With careful will, Lunicia made a magical call. The tiny spark of light was lost to the other children in the wash of the magician’s brilliant power. But Gwynn turned directly toward her. Her eyes flew open wide and she ran, ducking around her peers, to where Lunicia hid.
“You’re alive!”
“I’m so sorry, Gwynn, but he will kill me if he finds me, and now you, too. We are in grave danger!”
“What do we do, Madam?”
Lunicia signaled her to be quiet and led her around the building to a back garden and farther on into the shadows. There were no ashy strands here. The stranger did not waste his ephemeral tendrils on this far off and empty garden.
“When I was young, I wanted to leave very badly.” Lunicia ducked into a thick vine growing along the outer wall. “I searched every possible way out of the compound. I used magic sight and found this.” She revealed a door locked with a heavy, rusted padlock.
“How do we get it open?” Gwynn asked.
“Turns out the key to this thing is being the High Priestess.” She cast her personal charm upon the lock and it opened with a crisp little click. “I guess this means my peers did not get around to removing my mantle before…”
The door opened to blackness. She grabbed Gwynn’s hand and pulled her inside. It occurred to her that she had never opened this door after Master Fa finally told her of the old battlements from the days when the Temple was first built at the height of the Mage War.
A torch on the wall lit itself, filling steep narrow stairs with light. Lunicia led her charge down through caked dust and thickly woven cobwebs to the bottom where they turned to a wide chamber.
“Where are we?” Gwynn asked.
“Below the garden,” Lunicia deduced, stepping carefully onto the stone floor of a room that had to be the entire width of the garden above. The floor was a wide ledge ending in a narrow channel that circled a stone platform marked with symbols for the realm of the Earth. Below this was darkness and water that she could feel as a cold draft around her ankles and smell as the sea hitting her nostrils. Above the platform, the roof arched into a dome that had to be the base of the garden’s dry fountain. It held the symbols for the realm of the Air, including round holes that arced across it in several directions.
“This is the True Temple. It is no longer used, because it was built for battle, and there have been none for a very long time.” Lunicia pointed at the platform. “That is the True Circle. If you could see below like you do above you would realize this space forms a sphere where the three realms meet. The stone that the inner circle stands on is a pillar embedded deeply in the island’s rocky heart. The water you hear below has been drawn in from the ocean. The air you breathe is freshly drawn through the holes in the dome above, and in a few minutes the moon will cross one of those holes. If we draw it down, our magic will be multiplied tenfold. This is the most powerful circle ever designed.”
Gwynn was about to say something when a scraping sound cau
sed them both to freeze. They were not alone.
A flickering light came on in another staircase farther along the curve of the room. The Elder Dorm Administrator entered, greeting the pair of women with a grim nod. He led a slow, shuffling, wobbly line of elderly former priests down the stone steps. They were a frail parade, dressed in thin gowns and loose slippers. Although silent, their round eyes and drooping jaws told of their shock at discovering this place really did exist and the dire circumstances that brought them to it.
“What have you allowed in?” the Administrator asked.
His wavy white hair was familiar and his name came as soon as she pictured it in his book-filled office behind an overflowing desk. Politics and territory claiming were regular business for him and the rest of the mundane staff. She stiffened her back to stretch up to her full height before responding. “Gerhard,” she commanded, “guide the elders into the circle.”
His reply was the definition of efficient annoyance. “Where are the priests to fight this attack?”
“I am what is left of the priests. Gwynn is all that remains of the novices and acolytes. We require the masters inside the circle. You and the other mundane may stay in the chamber, outside the circle along the wall. Quietly.”
Gerhard would have argued, but Master Wulfric, tired of standing after his trek, pressed himself forward to follow her directions.
“If another war is upon us,” Wulfric wheezed, “then we’d better be at arms.”
Lunicia smiled coldly into Gerhard’s eyes and made a sweeping gesture with her arms to indicate that all the aged should cross the channel to stand on the stone circular platform.
“We are doomed,” Gerhard grumbled as he kept pace with his charge, lifting gently as the old man crossed the gap.
“The Temple is a fort, dear,” Lunicia continued to Gwynn as they and the mundane staff helped the elders onto the platform. “It was made by a small group of powerful wizards who wanted to change the world. Before the Temple existed, magicians were born all over our island kingdom. They learned their own ways of using their power, but their youth and ignorance led to very dark magic. And even though sometimes a hundred magi would be born within a generation, there was usually only one or two left by the time they reached their zenith.
“These good magicians built this place to end the chaos, then constructed the buildings above to contain the next born and redirect their efforts.”
Gwynn stopped abruptly, holding on to Master Chez’ bony arm. Her eyes were wide with horror. “Jarek’s right? The Temple gathers us to keep us under control?”
“Gifted children must be contained,” Chez wheezed.
Lunicia took Chez away from Gwynn, pressing his other arm to hush him. “I know you feel betrayed. I felt that, too.”
“It really is a prison for young magi.”
“It was made to save young magi! They were immature, ignorant and reckless. Some of them were from families that wanted power and wealth. My own family got its fortune through magic that tortured and killed. Most wealthy families gained their power that same way. They would raise their gifted children to be heinous wizards. They cast spells against each other, terrible, ruthless, ugly things. Like this boy’s curse.”
She had to reach back for Gwynn, drawing her last across the gap. “It was messy and poorly wrought. There was no skill, only emotions like anger and jealousy. He’s been isolated all his life. He thinks he can just bring all the young magi together and be happy, but it can’t last. He’s going to reach the pinnacle—he has to be there already—he can only diminish, now. Unless he draws power from the others.”
“He can do that?” Gwynn at last stood in the center of the circle.
“If he’s figured it out, and I think he has. He’s got all kinds of power, but no training. He was able to put together this curse, but he started on the new moon. That’s how we can stop him.”
“I don’t understand.” Gwynn was standing forlorn in the center of the circle, her arms to her sides, her shoulders slumped.
“Because we haven’t taught you, yet,” Lunicia said, walking back to stand with her. “And he doesn’t know, either. A full lunar cycle is twenty-eight nights. One is the night of the new moon—that’s for rest. The night of the full moon is the fruition. A dark moon curse has thirteen days to mature, but that means its most powerful day is only halfway through the cycle. There are another thirteen days when it is vulnerable.
“The physical damage is done, but the curse’s influence behind it is a power that has to obey the laws of the lunar cycle. It is not permanent unless it can be maintained past the next new moon. We can stop this. We have thirteen more days to unwind this boy’s work. If we can finish before the new moon, his influence over the uninitiate will be undone.”
Lunicia invoked the circle alone. The old ones would be too slow, and Gwynn was still ignorant of what she now desperately needed to know. With quick steps Lunicia walked the very edge of the platform, tracing the symbols of the three realms of Earth, Sky and Sea. As she did so, she felt each response and almost wept in relief as the magical machine of the True Circle rumbled to its awakened power. When she looked down from her final tribute, she saw the upturned shining faces of the old ones, basking in the ethereal power, serene in their reconnection with what was for them a rare vitality of magic.
Gwynn’s eyes were wide. “What just happened?”
“We are between worlds,” Lunicia replied. “This is where the three realms meet and from where we can work our strongest magic. Close your eyes and center your consciousness like I taught you the other night. This time you will draw down the moon’s power.”
Almost immediately the first brightening sent a shaft of moonlight down through the vaulted ceiling. Instead of falling in a straight pinpoint to the floor, it spread wide, filling the air of the sphere with a bluish light. The elders sighed and mumbled their private chants. Gwynn’s eyes filled with tears that overflowed and ran down her cheeks. “It’s so beautiful!” she whispered.
Lunicia tried not to lose herself in the light’s vibrating power. She lifted Gwynn’s arms, keeping them wide and apart until the novice held the correct stance. Gwynn’s form faded into a white pillar of crackling light. “You sense the power, Gwynn,” she said.
“I do.”
“Take hold of it. Grasp it like the end of a long string and wrap it around your core. Draw as much as you can. Wrap it tightly to yourself.”
“I can see up through the strand!” Gwynn squealed. “I’m rising in the air!”
Murmurs rose up from the elders around them. Questions and worries. Was this priestess not trained? Lunicia dared not tell them the girl was a mere novice. “No, Gwynn,” she ordered, “Do not follow the light. Draw it down to you.”
But Gwynn was not listening. She was traveling outside her body for the first time in her life, released from the weight of flesh and flying on moonlight. “I can see the Temple grounds!” she exclaimed. “I see the rooftops and the gardens!”
“No Gwynn, come back to us.” Lunicia pleaded.
“The Temple roof is burnt.”
“Don’t go there.”
“Something’s on fire in the city.”
It was dangerous to follow her charge, but Gwynn’s words rang in Lunicia like a gong. Something was afire and she needed to know what it was. With barely a thought to the disturbed elders, Lunicia launched herself upward through the moonbeams to follow Gwynn’s elongated awareness into the night sky.
The city through mooncast eyes was mostly dark. The whole island and the sea beyond were mere shadows on shadows. This made the shifting colors of wizard battle all the more stunning. Eruptions of thick ash rolled and burned around the small ball of green, gold and red luminescence in the far corner of the city. From this brilliant ball, long whips of ghostly light twisted and whirled, striking out here and there at the thick columns of smoke.
“Oni!” Lunicia must have said the name aloud, because she heard far off grumbles
of distrust from the elders. Tugs started to pull on her consciousness. The colors faded, the landscape withdrew to shadows that soon blended into the stone of the walls, and the shifting bodies of the elders.
Gwynn sat upright, her eyes closed, her face awash in moonlight. “Oni’s fighting Jarek!” she whispered. After a moment of silence, she laughed and her eyes flew open wide. She rose to her feet, thrusting her arms into the air and light fell into her like a tremendous waterfall. The whole great sphere became flooded with crackling light. Jarring bolts of lightning struck the stone, sizzled the seawater and flashed across the unseen skin of their circle.
“Oni just showed me so much!” Lightning snapped through Gwynn’s blonde curls. It snapped at the ends of her fingers. “I know how to defeat Jarek.”
“You cannot fight him tonight, Gwynn!” Lunicia screamed. “You must follow the course of the moon! In thirteen days you can lift the curse and restore the Temple’s control.”
“No.” Gwynn’s voice rumbled with power. “I will defeat this angry boy, but Oni has shown me that I need to take the power that is mine. I will not be bound to this Temple, or drag my peers back under its control.”
She looked around at the seated elders whose eyes were now fearfully riveted on her glowing face. “Look at you! You are all husks of your former selves, drained of your essence by this terrible place. Oni is older than all of you! Do you not see that something is wrong?”
“Is she mad?” one of the oldest mistresses cried.
“High Priestess, gave she no blood oath?” asked another.
Lunicia felt her insides churn. Now she faced wild wizards from without and within. The whole circle writhed in glowing strands that emanated from the novice’s body. They were so beautiful, a striking contradiction to the Temple-taught certainty that Gwynn was suddenly dangerous. “I trusted you to keep your head without the oath.”
Lucky or Unlucky? 13 Stories of Fate Page 10